Marc Cooper

Let’s hope that Antonio Villaraigosa’s victory party — the biggest anyone can remember, with 5,000 or more celebrating in the downtown streets — is, at last, the beginning of his real campaign. I voted for Tony and wish him well. And I really, really, really wanted to squeeze sleazeball Jimmy......

Death takes a little piece from all of us. And in the case of Los Angeles labor leader Miguel Contreras, who died suddenly at age 52 last Friday, it takes a key player off the city’s chessboard. Contreras will be missed. As leader of the County Federation of Labor for......

There’s nothing to feel smug about in the sudden fall of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I do mean fall. Arnold went as low as you can get last week, when he uncorked yet another vintage magnum of Pete Wilson’s bitter anti-immigrant whine. First, there was Arnold’s dummkopf statement of a couple......

By the second inning of last Friday’s Dodger shutout against the Padres, my neck and back were starting to turn numb. Certainly not out of boredom. Derek Lowe’s pitching was stellar. So were the back-to-back homers by Kent and Bradley. At least that’s what I was told. My problem was......

This just in from the Vatican Politburo, ending two days of closed-door meetings. The red-velvet curtains of the secret lodge open onto St. Peter’s plaza. The following communiqué is read to the assembled masses: “Comrades! The forces of degenerate humanism, of decadent individualism, of lascivious homosexuality, of opportunist feminism and......

John O’Leary and John Negroponte. Two ex-U.S. ambassadors. The former passed away last week at age 58 of Lou Gehrig’s disease. The latter was passed upward this week by the U.S. Senate to become America’s new intelligence czar. Both men worked for the same U.S. foreign service but couldn’t be......

Photos by Marc CooperTOMBSTONE, ARIZONA — Unwittingly, for sure. Nevertheless, the organizers of this month’s Minuteman Project — a plan to deploy 1,000 or more volunteers to blockade a portion of the Mexican border — couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate staging ground than this movie-set town totally dedicated to......

Photo by Michael Hyatt (top): Gateway to hell (bottom): A final warning Photos by Marc Cooper......

Photo by Michael Hyatt ALTAR, Mexico — As soon as he spots me taking pictures on the steps of the 3-century-old avocado-and-lemon-colored Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe church, Manuelito makes a beeline my way. A pudgy 30-year-old Tzotzil Indian from the impoverished southern state of Chiapas, standing barely 4 and a......

“Is it safe? Is it safe?” as Laurence Olivier asked in the great movie Marathon Man. Has Congress finally run out of gas and safely gone home? Or are we going to have to arm ourselves with picks and drills to fend off these used-car dealers, small-town lawyers, Texas exterminators-turned-legislators,......